Cecil Clementi was born on 1 September 1875 in Cawnpore, India, the son of an army officer, and was educated at St Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He joined the Hong Kong government as a cadet in 1899 and served in posts such as assistant land officer for the New Territories and magistrate, becoming fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin and earning a reputation as a Colonial Office 'China hand'. In 1913 he was transferred to British Guiana as Colonial Secretary, where he acted as the officer administering the government three times, and in 1922 he became Colonial Secretary of Ceylon. On 1 November 1925 he succeeded Sir Reginald Stubbs as Hong Kong's 17th Governor. He took office at the height of the Canton-Hong Kong General Strike, combining negotiation with conciliatory gestures and courting Chinese elites, and in 1926 appointed Chow Shouson as the first Chinese member of the Executive Council. He promoted Chinese education, founding the Government Vernacular Middle School (today's Clementi Secondary School, the first government Chinese middle school in Hong Kong) in 1926 and, as Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, helping establish its Department of Chinese in 1927. A skilled Chinese calligrapher, he wrote the characters 'Xiang Hai Ming Shan' on the archway of the Tsing Shan Monastery, and the poet Rabindranath Tagore called him the most cultivated European he had met in the East. He left Hong Kong in 1930 to become Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States, resigning in 1934 on grounds of health, and died in Buckinghamshire, England, on 5 April 1947.
Clementi brought Chinese elites into the machinery of government, with Chow Shouson's appointment marking the start of Chinese participation in the Executive Council; his Chinese-language school survives under his name, while his conciliatory handling of the General Strike steadied colonial rule and raised the standing of Chinese within the colonial system.
Achievements
- 1925 · Became Hong Kong's 17th Governor, handling the turmoil of the Canton-Hong Kong General Strike
- 1926 · Appointed Chow Shouson as the first Chinese Executive Council member and founded the Government Vernacular Middle School
- 1927 · Helped establish the University of Hong Kong's Department of Chinese